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Re: XML doesn't deserve its "X".

• To: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>
• Subject: Re: XML doesn't deserve its "X".
• From: John Cowan <jcowan@r...>
• Date: Tue, 05 Mar 2002 09:54:06 -0500
• Cc: Eric van der Vlist <vdv@d...>, xml-dev@l...
• References: <3C847988.7020608@d...> <1015333543.3350.448.camel@l...>
• User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:0.9.6) Gecko/20011120

Simon St.Laurent wrote:

>>XML is now legacy. Its users community is screaming against any change 
>>and its specification body seems paralysed by its structure and the 
>>diverging interests of its members...
>
> I'm not sure that makes XML as a whole legacy.


Anything that is actually implemented and deployed is by definition
legacy.  Googling for "legacy Java" (exact phrase) today produced some
350 hits, and even "legacy XML" almost 150.

As usual, Frederick Brooks called it correctly almost thirty years ago
in _The Mythical Man-Month_, chapter 1:

	[T]he product over which one has labored so long
	appears to be obsolete upon (or before) completion.
	Already colleagues and competitors are in hot
	pursuit of new and better ideas.  Already the
	displacement of one's thought-child is not only
	conceived, but scheduled.  [...] As soon as one
	freezes a design, it becomes obsolete in terms
	of its concepts.

Of course, he also says, with understatement that is less than usual
in our profession:

	The new and better product is generally not
	*available* when one completes his own: it is
	only talked about [...].  The real tiger is
	never a match for the paper one, unless
	actual use is wanted.  Then the virtues
	of reality have a satisfaction all their own.

-- 
John Cowan <jcowan@r...>     http://www.reutershealth.com
I amar prestar aen, han mathon ne nen,    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
han mathon ne chae, a han noston ne 'wilith.  --Galadriel, _LOTR:FOTR_

• References:
  • XML doesn't deserve its "X".
    • From: Eric van der Vlist <vdv@d...>
  • Re: XML doesn't deserve its "X".
    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>

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